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Allergies Roll Over

News Note

By Lara Evans Bracciante

Originally published in Massage & Bodywork magazine, February/March 2003.

Babies born into a household with pets may have a decreased risk of suffering from allergies down the road, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study evaluated the pet population in the suburban Detroit homes of 474 infants. Six to seven years later, the same children were tested for common allergens such as dust mites, dog, cat, ragweed and blue grass. The results of skin prick tests revealed 33.6 percent of children who had no dogs or cats in their first year of life tested positive to allergens; 34.4 percent who had one dog or cat also tested positive; but only 15.4 percent with exposure to two or more dogs or cats in their first year of life tested positive.

If you’ve strained one of your fibularis tendons, the pain in your ankle will let you know something is wrong, but you’ll probably have a hard time identifying the fibularis as a source of the trouble.

Technology has certainly put us in touch with important information on preventive measures for spreading the COVID-19 virus, such as washing our hands and avoiding contact with those who are sick. However, much of the information is ignoring an essential part to staying healthy—boosting our immune system!

Almost every massage therapist has encountered a client with chronically tense muscles that are so stiff it takes great effort to massage them. Others quietly suffer from muscle aches that affect both their work and leisure time, making them miserable. Some people don’t even know they are tense, while others are aware but have no idea why. There are dozens of less-common medical conditions that can cause stiff muscles, such as Lyme’s disease or lupus, but the following 5 reasons are among the most common.

Massage therapy has powerful healing properties. There is simply nothing that compares to the warmth and precision of real human touch. But modern life has become so tense and stressful that an increasing number of clients are suffering from chronic tension: painful muscle spasms and conditions like fibromyalgia, where they feel a diffuse discomfort almost every day.

Adults are now sitting around more than at any other time in history. And there can be rather serious consequences. Some authors have gone so far as to describe chronic, prolonged sitting as “the new smoking,” a deadly habit.